The Chaser Report - ARVO: David Shoebridge on fixing cooked politics

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Greens Member David Shoebridge joins the team for an Arvo Chat! David talks about why on earth he's running for federal politics, what he thinks voters should be looking out for, and how he hopes to cause change from inside a "cooked" system. Plus as always, Charles seeks out our political guest's opinions on the important issues: koalas and desks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the afternoon edition of The Chaser Report for Thursday the 17th of February. With me, Gabby and Alexa and our very special guest, David Shoebridge. Hi. Hey, everybody. I'm glad we've cleared up to date. That's got us off to a strong start. Now, so David is a Greens MP and has been in the Upper House for many years now, but he is now running for the Federal Senate, on the Senate ticket for the Greens in the upcoming election.

David, why the hell would you want to go into Federal Parliament? Well, it is a good question, and, you know, different times I wake up in night sweats and think about it. But look, 11 years in the New South Wales Upper House, That's its own cruelty, you know, with... And you've got to work with Mark Lathen. Mark Latham, Fred Nile, you know, so... Oh, fun, that. And some, you know, some amazingly wonderful colleagues, of course.

But the, you know... Who, who name them? Well, I'll start with Abigail and Kate, my two Greens. But the, no, look, I actually think this is an extraordinary opportunity for the Greens, federally. Well, to have you there. What an opportunity. No, no, but the, there's a chance here to get, like, 12,

senators in the federal Senate, like the biggest voting block ever for a party that's not the liberals or the, um, or Labor. And with that, have a real say on the direction of the country. I mean, I've, the reason I got into state politics was I was watching it from outside and thinking, bloody hell, you know, and I literally had some colleagues say, well, stop complaining, get in and try and fix it. And I suppose it's the same kind of passion that's driving me federally here. I look at it. And like I think most people I talk to, a genuine level of sort of disengagement, disgust, sort of, you know, low-level horror at what's happening federally. And you can either, you know, walk away from it or walk up to it, and I know,

that's what we're doing. And is it also because the desks are really attractive up there? Charles, when will we let this bit die? Yeah, the furnishings isn't what's driving me. I tell you what does worry me, though, like the New South Wales Parliament, you're in a, whenever you're in Parliament, you're in a kind of bubble. But the New South Wales Parliament, you know, is in the middle of Sydney, you're like five metres away from the rest of the world. And you do.

You get lots of people coming and, you know, real interchange. What does worry me about is being sucked into that thing in Canberra. And I'm genuinely, you know, I genuinely worried about that and I'm not quite sure how you prepare yourself for it. Well, my sister used to be a staffer down in Canberra in the sort of 1990s and just said it was the most awful place in the world. Like it was just, it was just horrible in every way. We can stop this now.

But no. But are you top of the ticket or are you second on the green ticket? Yeah, top of the ticket. Yeah, right. So you're heading there. There's nothing you can do about it. Well, you know, you'll get a quota. You don't, you don't, you don't ever take any election for granted.

And we now have a much more democratic way we elect senators than we used to. We just have those terrible cooked tickets where, you know, someone could become a senator with 54 primary votes. It's now genuinely reflects the level of support you have in the community. So, you're so effective of... No, no, no, but... So that method just meant that David Shoebree came.

That method actually meant that instead of a kind of backroom deal, which often you saw, you know, outright preference farming, it now actually is much more democratic. That's much better for us in terms of the Senate ticket. But look, I'm not taking this for granted. There's a lot of campaigning to be done. It's really hard to keep the Greens' voice heard, visible, if a voice can be visible, in the lead-up to a federal election,

you tend to get squashed out. So we need to be, you know, doing what we do best, grassroots campaigning, connecting with people, you know, saying the things that neither the other parties will say. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. Well, let's get to some of the issues because there are some big issues, and I know one that we've been running on hard in our podcast. is koalas. Are you for or against koalas?

Yeah, I'd give koalas the vote if I could. Right, so you think that they should be able to survive. I'm kind of keen for not just koalas to survive, but I'm kind of keen on like, you know, organized society surviving, most of our ecosystems surviving. Yeah, I think you've lost most of our audience just with that policy statement because we are very vehemently anti-coala on this podcast.

Yeah. Speak for yourself. And we see it as a good debate. development that, you know, they're now about to be extinct in New South Wales. Queensland is also following suit. They've been put on the extinction list there. And it's actually Victoria, who's the Lagarde, and they're not going extinct at all there. Yeah, well, they've got, thankfully, finally transitioning out of logging.

Can I tell you, I was down in Bega, as I think pretty much every state MP was in the last two months. But one of the things that really struck me, we're down there with obviously lots of forestry forest campaign is desperately keen to end logging. 80% of the forest around there smash by fires. They're still smashing the forest though with logging. And one image that really stuck with me and made me think, you know, can we turn this around in time?

You know, does anybody really get it? There was, there was birthed at the chip mill down in Eden. Birthed at the chip mill was a 55,000 ton carrier to take 55,000 tons of native forest wood chip off overseas to be used primarily for cardboard and paper out of the forests that had already been so savaged and we know that there are endangered koala colonies down on the south coast and for me it was just this it was kind of really visceral feeling because I don't know if you've seen a 55,000 ton bulk carrier

it's a bloody big thing it was just being loaded up with shredded forest forest that had already been 80% whacked from the fires and I but don't you think that it's the koala's responsibility to therefore find somewhere else to live? Like, if they're going to live in sort of, you know, places which have really useful stuff to sell, then they should find somewhere else. Well, I've always said, you know, if you want to change something, grassroots campaigning is a pretty good way of doing it. I think koalas have got something going for them.

They've got that attractive megafauna look. And they ruthlessly exploit that, and so they bloody should. Because unfortunately, they don't have the vote. But the problem with koalas, just to get serious, just to get real for a second. They live where we want to live. The problem with koalas, no, is that they only eat eucalyptus leaves, which lack any nutrition or value. Like, eucalyptus oil is basically, has no nutritional value.

Their brains have become incredibly small because they don't get any nutrition. Like, their brains actually rattle around in their heads because it lacks sort of thing. Are you fine for a job at an Australian zoo? We've got to call it on koalas. Like, they're not an animal that desert. of survival. You are like the anti-Steve-Owen. I reckon what they are,

there are this example of this extraordinary adaptation of our native animals. I mean, they've just, they have adapted this extraordinary way of surviving in a really hot, hard, desperate place. They eat something no one else will eat, in large part, which is a pretty good survival strategy

until we decided to turn up and said, everywhere koalas live, we want to live. We want to take your habitat. We want to chop down your forest. And the bits that you finally, that you found yourself surviving in, we want them too. But no, it's a good survival strategy

to eat shit that no one else will eat until we turn up and decide to turn it into wood chips. We said that about Charles actually in the office because he eats everything we don't eat in the fucking Barberidge. He's the... He's the koala in the office. He also has chlamydia, but I don't want to talk about that home. That's my fault.

Now, another issue, talking of eating shit, is gig workers. So you're running a campaign at the moment to sort of make, you know, Uber Eats drivers, those sorts of gig economy workers, have the same employment conditions as, you know. Well, not ask us, we're... We're not employed, we are.

Or are we exploited. You're all sham contractors. That's right. We're like used car salesmen of the comedy industry, yes. But what's the argument there? Because surely that'll just make prices rise and we'll all have to pay extra for our Uber Eats. Isn't that a disaster?

How is that popular? Yeah. Um, the, the, one of the things we're looking at, I mean, the Uber, Uber drivers, delivery drivers, um, some of the most exploited workers in that we have, they come, they, they tend to be already vulnerable from vulnerable parts of the community. Um, some of them don't have, you know, um, full immigration rights. Some of their employees know that they've got issues with in terms of working rights, ruthlessly exploited. So what we're trying to do is just do some basics, like ensure that they have the right to some annual leave, ensure that they have some, some right to some secure employment and some minimum rates and ensure that if they get injured at work, they have the same rights to workers' compensation as any other worker. I mean, one of the things that really struck me, we've had an inquiry into it, and we've had a bunch of gig workers come, some family members come, and in fact, flew from overseas to tell us about their husband, having been killed as a gig worker and the family thrown

into poverty. They just don't have access to workers' cop rights. And every single, every single entitlement is contested. We could fix that. We could fix that in an after afternoon. We could just extend workers' comp rights to them in New South Wales. And we could use some, even some state-based laws, even if the federal government won't act, we could use state-based laws in New South Wales to protect their employment rights. But it's just this refusal to act. It's not inevitable that gig workers get exploited. It's because politicians won't act. So what, wait a minute, what's, what is the argument from the employer's perspective that they shouldn't have workers' comp? They're entrepreneurs. They're small business people.

They literally say, oh, it'll make New South Wales anti-competitive. It'll affect the business economy in South Wales. We're going to start ordering from Victoria. It's almost as though you're in that meeting. Is that honestly the argument? It'll make New South Wales anti-competitive. Also, the gig economy, by being so flexible, is super creative, you know, creative ways to exploit people,

and that ability to exploit people won't be as, you know, free-ranging. So there was a federal court case about this very issue last week. What happened there? Because it sort of sounded like it was a very complicated result. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's been a series of federal court cases trying to argue that gig workers are employees and have all the...

We could spend time talking about the indicia of employment, but there's a whole lot of factors you look at about whether someone is actually an independent contractor or whether they're actually an employee. And you look at all these indicia about control. Do you only work for one person? Can you set your own rates? Can you set your own contract? You look at all those index. And the problem with that test is one court will say yes and one court will say no. And in the meantime, everybody's caught in a muddle, which is why

you would think it's the job of parliaments to actually just say, actually we're going to expressly say this. We're going to protect gig workers. We're going to give them basically the same right as employees. And it's not just for gig workers either. And I think this is one of the core reasons why I'm focused on this, is that as that part of the economy expands, it erodes the rights of every other working person in the country. Like it just expands. It's like a sort of, it just eats the underpinning of all the other protections we have. Because I'm thinking of putting Alexa and Gabby on a, you know, per joke sort of app thing.

What did the salesman say to the doorman? I'm really broke. Well, the good news is there's a whole bunch of consultants who'll help you do that. Like the grains are obviously, you know, onto this issue. Where's the Labor Party on this? You'd think that that would be a core issue for them? Why haven't we heard about? Well, almost nothing federally.

Like, it's just not on their radar federally. I will say at a state level, there are some state Labor MPs who I work with productively in this space, and I do. And I'll give a shout out to a bloke called Daniel Mookie. He's been doing some hard work in this. And I really, you know, there's a bunch of stuff I've worked collaboratively with those people in Labor to try and do this kind of work. But as an institution, they just don't prioritize it. And largely because they see gig workers is really they're not the swing voters. They're not that, you know, self-employed tradesperson in whatever marginal seat they're aiming for that they think is going to swing their federal election.

They're so focused on that kind of narrow casting as against the coalition. But I will say there are people. But there's a fuck ton of gig workers. Like, you'd think there'd be some votes in it, wouldn't they? Well, you'd think so. Even if it was purely mercenary, you'd do it, because a lot of them don't have citizenship. That's another reason why, you know,

they don't just fly under the radar for major parties. But I think the idea that it impacts everybody else. I mean, surely you should make that clear. I think I have a solution, actually, for this, to make the federal government care about this issue, is we just do what, I don't know if you're aware, there's a really amazing expose series called Undercover Boss. And we should just swap it over.

So, like, everyone in federal parliament doesn't have annual leave, doesn't have health insurance, doesn't have workers' rights, just for like a couple weeks and just until it lasts long enough that they're like, we have to change this. And then they change it for everyone. And they should be paid per piece of legislation passed. They wouldn't know anything. There are dangers in that.

Yeah, whoops. And I do think that's part of why the bubble, I mean, we spoke about the bubble at the beginning. If people are critical of, you know, MP's entitlements and MPs, this, and I think that's fair enough. But one of the problems with it is, particularly if you're wrapped up in a bubble and you don't see anything else, is you really understand what it's like to live on $12 a job.

Yeah. And you're trying to do three or four jobs every hour just to basically get enough to pay your rent in your sharehouse. It's really hard to understand that. if you're in this kind of, you know, well-paid protected bubble. So, will you vow to slash politicians' wages if you get in? No, I haven't. But I will say this.

I will say this. I will say this. I often joke with a former Greens MP, Larry Anon, who at a state and a federal level went through and smashed every single politician's pension that she could lay her hands on. And she single-handedly destroyed all pensions for New South Wales. MPs going forward and single-handedly destroyed all pensions for our federal MPs going

forward. And I often look at her and say, thanks, Lee. Thanks so much. No, but I think that's been, I think that has really been important as part of that campaigning against entitlements. And, you know, the idea that once you got elected to Parliament, you'd be protected forever. We've got rid of that. But isn't the problem with that, though, just to play devil's advocate. Of course. That then, you know, Gladys, run often gets a job at Optus five seconds after she leaves. And Macquarie Bank has a sort of open offer, knowing that all these politicians are coming off

and they're going to be on Skid Row. Working for Optus for Gladys is kind of like me going to Maccas after this job. Like that's her Macca's. She just had a state government level job, and now she's working for Optus. You know, it's not as cushy as I think you're laying it out to me. Well, but no, but I mean, one of the issues that's constantly on my mind is the nature of corruption in politics. And, you know, some people think that the corruption

in politics is a brown paper bag of money. And, you know, it does happen. Like in New South Wales, I mean, in New South Wales, of course it happens. I remember. In New York, they're all in jail. I remember a decade ago, there was a liberal candidate up in around Newcastleway. And he, he was a vet, and he actually left the dog. He was in the middle of operating and a dog and ethethitized. And he left the dog on the operating table in the middle, ducked outside and took $10,000 from a property developer in a Bentley and then went back into the dog. And I thought that was a real statement about politics. IAC didn't like that very much when they found out about it. But there's that. But that's not the major corruption.

The major corruption is, I think, two other things. One is corporate donations that, you know, corporations don't give money to politicians because they love democracy. They do. it purely to drive their profits, and that's pretty obvious. But the other one is the revolving door. If you're a senior minister, you've got portfolio responsibilities, you've got a leadership position, and you know that when you step out of politics, you're going to walk straight into a job with Macquarie Bank, as the former Premier Mike Bair did, job with Optus, Gladys Berriglin did, you know, a job with a big defence contractor, which former federal defence ministers have done. I mean, you can just keep the list going. That is really corrupting.

But that was happening before pensions were removed. It'll happen after pensions were removed. We just need a clear legislative prohibition, like two or three years where you can't do that. And maybe, you know, you give a base salary for two or three years to cover that. I'd be willing to pay that to stop that level of corruption for senior ministers and people literally walking out of regulating an industry straight into earning from it.

Yeah. A bit cooked. A fair bit cooked. You can fix it. Yeah. We have, you know, we all just sort of inside and slack shoulder there at that moment about it. It's fixable. Well, it just feels like it's not fixable, though, because what that actually feels like is,

oh, you have two or three years where they go and wine and dine the top end of town. Like, I don't know, for me, for me, I reckon what I've observed of, you know, when roads get built and stuff like that, the people who I've talked to where you go, how was that decision, mate? How did that terrible road that's got harbour views, you know, get constructed? And the answer is, well, the top end of, like, those big businesses are just better at the lunches. Like, yeah, there's the $20,000 in a nation. But actually, you know, and that gets you a bit of access. But it's actually that they all lunch together and the big business sort of puts on great lunches.

He's figured it out. It's brunching. That's the problem. Brunching, and I think, I actually think part of the... It's constantly being in people's face is actually what it is, and paying to have your team, your consultants, your position, constantly in the face of politicians, that is actually part of the problem. At a sort of almost friendship level, though, it's like,

it's not like, oh, here, let's talk about this road. It's like, you know, do you get your stake rare or medium rare? Yeah. Oh, by the way, shouldn't we do a ride? Yeah, sure. So it was one of your policy platform's going to be to ban brunch when you get to federal? Yeah, I think one of our policy. positions will be complete transparency on what those meetings are. But also, these kind of

insidious corrupting strategies, you actually need, that's why you need a permanent, fully powered anti-corruption watchdog to be constantly on the beat. And looking at the way money will always find a way. We could come up with something tomorrow, which would be bloody good, and deal with all the corruption risks we have now. But the only way we're going to defend that is if you have something like the New South Wales ICAC sitting there with all those powers looking at what the next corruption risk is, looking at the next way in which money is trying to find its way. And, you know, this is a struggle between this kind of decency and politics and corporate money

and power and influence. That's never going to go away. We need a kind of permanent institution fully empowered to fight it. Well, this has come up in the podcast in the last few weeks, which is, okay, so say the lives get voted out at a federal level, you know, Labor will bring in some sort of legislation. around the federal ICAC, like that's part of their policy platform. But how, like, isn't it also not in Labor's interests to scratch too deeply? Because, you know, like, we know from a state level, like, they've got skeletons in their

closet, you know, like, things like, oh, how retrospective it should be. I'm not sure that Labor's going to go, oh, yeah, let's just clean it all out. Which is, I mean, how did we get the ICAC in New South Wales? We didn't get the ICAC in New South Wales because suddenly the Labor Party worked up and said, hey, maybe we should people look into what we do? The coalition said, hey, that's a cool idea. We got, we heard the ICAC. Well, he did it.

He did it, though, in a minority government. Yes. He didn't have the numbers on the floor of parliament to form government unless he delivered on a fully empowered ICAC. And that's how we got it there. And I think that's how we'll get a fully empowered ICAC federally because it's amazing. You know, we're having those, already hearing those discussions when I talk to labor colleagues at a state level, they're suddenly thinking, you know, all the kind of really sort of attacking, exposing inquiries we're doing and forcing release of government documents, which happens at a state level in the

upper house, you know, non-government majority constantly exposing, you know, that's how we got the grants that Berejiklian rolled out, that's how we got a whole bunch of that exposed. There's suddenly looking at the way the upper house is operating and the exposure of all this stuff and thinking, maybe we should cool our heels a little like that. because you go from opposition to government and suddenly all your views about transparency do change, which is why you can't trust a majority government to put in place comprehensive anti-corruption legislation.

That's only going to happen, I think, with full retrospective powers, full prosecutorial kind of powers, that's only going to happen with a minority government that forces them. Is there a minutes taker for every single meeting that occurs within federal government? Is there like somebody paid to do the minutes? No.

And in fact, there's even less transnational, Transparency federally than there is at a state level. At a state level, ministerial diaries have to be disclosed every three months. But they just tell you who they met with and sort of a one or two sentence, one or two word description about what the meeting was. That's insane. Charles paid Loughlin to be a minutes taker on a crappy workshop the other week. You'd think that like federally there'd be a person.

They'd be the most protected person in the country, but they'd be a person. You'd have to, you know, protect their identity and give them AFP protection. But the, you know, that's, as I said, again, that's why you need a fully empowered anti-corruption body that then looks into that. I mean, part of the rate, we got this kind of stuff in New South Wales. And geez, I'm not pretending New South Wales politics is good, but there's more transparency measures there than at a federal level.

A bunch of that came from a series of recommendations from ICAC. They saw what happened. They saw how the system got corrupted, and they recommended how to fix it. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Now, one of the things that I just hate about the grains and it always annoyed me about the grains. This is coming back to koalas again, isn't it? Yeah, if it does, I personally allow it, is that...

Go on, pick an animal. Like, and I think we saw it in federal parliament last week, which is the grains like to be right about everything. Like, you should always vote on your principles, on your values and that. And sometimes that's great. But actually, at other times, you actually have to be more widely. And the reason why Labor, for me, is appealing

is because they actually go, well, you know, sometimes you sell out your values because, no, because actually we have to get electoral power and we have to get a majority of the parliament to, you know, and majority of the voters to be able to sort of, run the government and you know like in some ways you can see the benefits of both things but but sort of the greens are a little bit sort of pure and therefore a little bit powerless sometimes well first of all I think there's a place for at least one party in

politics that he's going to stick to its principles and not sell out when the pressure hits so I reckon there's a place for the Greens in them in politics even assuming that characterisation is right but look the other thing I'd say is that the um look yeah of course you've got to stick to your principles. And I think if you don't, and particularly for a party like the Greens, so we've got, you know, these core principles that drive us, they drive our supporters, they want us to stick to our principles. But they also want us to produce practical outcomes. And I think that's very clearly something I've always understood. So I work with two other Greens colleagues. There's three of us in the New South Wales Up House, three out of 42.

And you don't get anything unless you're willing to go across, talk with whoever the hell you've got to talk to, in order to get the numbers. Do you have to look to Mark Lathen sometimes? He is one person that I won't talk to in order to get outcomes because, I mean, his votes are largely irrelevant. And I can explain why, if you want. There is one example. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to know.

But you've got to work with, I mean, I'll work with the Labor Party. I'll work with the coalition. I mean, I remember working closely with the coalition to get some renewable energy legislation through that has seen New South Wales have the single best set of legislation to roll out renewable energy projects across the state. Is Matt Keane good? But Matt Keene, Matt Keene, he's honest, right?

He'll sit down and he'll talk with you, and he's actually honest, and you sit down and you work out how if there's a stumbling block to prevent something that we were both keen to get, which was renewable energy legislation, we worked out how to overcome those stumbling blocks. And we did it openly, straightforward, you know, talking to each other across the table like we are. That's actually useful in politics.

You've got to be willing to do that. But you ask about Mark Latham. I think it's an example about how, you know, There's many reasons why I loathe the chap, but here's one. It was, he'd only just got elected, and there was some legislation coming through the government had, which was going to strip away a bunch of employment rights for, I think, people in the transport sector. They'll be moved from one entity to another, and with that, they were going to lose a bunch

of important redundancy rights and employment protections and the like. And the government had tried to sneak it through in a budget bill, and we'd called it out, and we had a bunch of amendments that were going to save it. And obviously, we'd worked with unions to, you know, make sure the amendments are effective. We had the amendments ready to go. I went and saw him a week before. Didn't need his vote. But, you know, in politics, it's always better to have more than less because you're never quite sure what's going to happen. We didn't need his vote, but I went and said, look, we're going to do this. It's about protecting employee rights. You used to leave the Labor

Party. Are you going to be on board with this? Oh, yeah, mate. Yeah, yeah. Great impression. Then, like, the day before or the morning before, went and saw. Yep, still on board. And then literally, we're on the floor. And then literally, we're on the floor. a parliament. I'm standing up to move the amendments. And he comes across and sees me and goes, oh, mate, look, you'll understand. I've just got a deal with the government. They're going to fund a car park in southwest Sydney. And I said, if they do that, I'll flip and vote for them on this legislation. I looked at him and I said, yeah, I understand. I kind of understand the nature of your politics. Sure, sure, mate. He just loves the drama. And he just flipped. I mean, I mean, good news is,

as I said, we didn't need his vote. So maybe that's an example of, you know, the kind of Labor Party deals. Because he got the car park. He got the car park. He had an unprincipled vote on the floor of parliament. Maybe that's how you want politics operate. For me, I was kind of disgusted. And it was a kind of lesson in, you know, that might have seemed clever of him in the moment.

But I've not forgotten it. Yeah. I'll never ever deal with him, you know, even contemplate sitting down and trying to come up to sort of an arrangement with him as if I would anyhow. But you don't forget that kind of stuff, that an unprincipled scumbagery. And I think when the election. The electorate sees it. They get revolted by it. So yeah, this religious discrimination bill, maybe Labor thought they had to vote for it. Maybe they did. But I kind of think that the electorate would have given them more credit if they'd said, you know what, there are so many noxious elements to this bill. This isn't being using discrimination laws as a shield to protect people. This is using discrimination laws as a sword to hurt people. And we're not going to vote for it. If they'd articulated that, I reckon they would have got much more credibility and much more support, including in parts of Western Sydney, Multicultural Australia, where they've seen how religion can be used as a sword to harm and hurt minorities.

And, you know, this idea that all of, you know, multicultural Australia, one of those laws through, I absolutely reject it. There are a bunch of people from minority religions who know how using religion in an aggressive, harmful way can be so harmful of politics, so harmful of them, so harmful of their community. If Labor had the guts to go out and articulate that, well, I reckon we wouldn't have that same kind of revolted. My personally was revolted by what happened in federal politics, and I don't think I'm alone. Yeah, look, couldn't agree more on that bill. But there was so many Greens, you know, on my Twitter feed and just sort of everywhere that week, sort of saying,

but why isn't the Greens, why isn't the Labor Party exactly like the Greens? Why aren't they behaving exactly the Greens? And it's like, because they're not the same party. Like, they actually have a completely different philosophy of change. Don't they also accept donations for the Labour Party? Well, so does the Greens. Well, not for fossil fuel companies. No, no, but look, maybe there's a place for the Labor Party. But if their place is getting as close as possible to the coalition,

but still being able to kind of, you know, pretend you're different, that's okay. Maybe there's a place for the Labor Party, but there's sure as bloody hell a place for, I would hope, a growing place for the Greens to actually say what your values are, vote for your values. Yeah, talk as you've got to do, negotiate as you've got to do. Because, you know, part of what Parliament is, isn't kind of, it's not a revolutionary instrument, Parliament. Has anyone noticed that? It's not a revolutionary instrument. I sometimes go into Parliament

sometimes, and the work we do inside Parliament is, you know, what do you want, gradual change, when do you want to injure course. I mean, that's Parliament. So you've got to do that, but you've also got to inspire people and you've got to be out in community and you've got to articulate a different way. So the Greens has been sort of bumping along, of 8, 10, 12% support for many, many years now, why, like, and yet climate change is, like, so obviously the issue facing the world, you know, like, it's, like, existential crisis. What do you think is going on? Why, why aren't the Greens growing, therefore? Yeah, I mean, look, I hope we will grow, and I hope we get a record number of MPs in this

federal election, and with that will come genuine political power within the Parliament, the ability to fundamentally deliver on those policies. That's why I think that's why I'm running for the Federal Senate. But I also think that there's something really cooked about some of the public discussion on climate in Australia. I mean, if you compare the way we discuss this to the way most European countries' discussion, even the UK under Boris Johnson,

like, you know, a pretty toxic, right-wing, divisive political player, but their discussion on climate is so far from where our public discourse. on climate is. And, you know, there's all sorts of reasons why that is. I think we don't haven't, the Labor Party has given up and won't articulate an alternative. I think we have a corporate media that has been captured by news, captured by News Corp, in a way that no other developed country really has that kind of concentrated media. And I think we have a totally unprincipled government who is literally willing to sell out the future for the next, the next federal

election and you put that together and it's a pretty hard space to campaign in but that been said do I think we have done everything we possibly could have hit every goal done everything as greens absolutely not and you can't but take on board those kinds of criticisms and views and think work harder fight for every vote articulate your message better be better at what you do because it's like this is the future we're fighting for it's not some sort of academic issue it's like literally the future that's at stake and we've got to do better so I've been doing a bit of recent search on you and um you know when you google david shoebridge research yeah yeah um you know there's lots of photos of you being arrested how many times have you been arrested

i've only been arrested and charged you know putting the back of a police wagon and charge it's only happened to me once um still pretty metal though um so you know i was so do you just do you just um get photo shoots of you being arrested to boost your image or something Yeah, yeah, it's just like a skomo version. I sometimes think, you know, there's all sorts of ways you can judge your performance in politics. And, you know, Greens MP being arrested is pretty up there. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

I think you've got to do better once. But I think you judge yourself on who your enemies are in politics and who you willing to stand beside and who your friends and allies are in politics. So, you know, if you've been smashed as I regularly do by the Daily Telegraph or the Australian or Mark Latham or whatever, you know, tick, key performance indicator being met there. you know, judge yourself by your enemies, but also judge yourself by your friends and who you're willing to stand with.

So a lot of my time is out there in community, working with Aboriginal grandmothers or having their grandkids, you know, continually stolen by child protection authorities. You know, working with students on climate change, and that arrest happened, and I, you know, I distinctly remember it. It was the end of 2019.

There was this sick, livery, liver-coloured sky. There was ash falling from the sky. It was during the fires. Oh, right, yeah. And a bunch of school kids were out the front, in a cul-de-sac, out the front of Scott Morrison's place in Kiribili House, in a cul-de-sac, blocking a cul-de-sac. I'm iconic.

Yeah, and then the police sent the riot squad in to move them out. What? I literally, I thought I was just turning up for a bit of solidarity with the kids, right? It was a stinking hot. I actually brought my youngest daughter with me along. I said, it'll only take two minutes, hand. Don't worry about it. And so we went there and it turned up, sweltering hot,

and I saw all these riot squad all lined up and all these school kids. And I just, I couldn't believe it. So I went up, saw all the kids and said, well, they know what's happening. Oh, they're threatening to move us on and they brought the riot squad in. And I went and saw the police. I said, what are you doing? You can't send the right squad in to clean out a bunch of school kids

who are blocking a cul-de-sat. That sounds exactly like something. What the bloody hell are you doing? And so we had this like two-hung-on. What about people's rights to turn around? Go back in the other direction. Yes, you turn to what we're infringing on those rights. You were in the meeting with the police party cars.

You were there. And it was like a three-hour-long negotiation. And in the end, they just said, well, stuff you. And they'd been, you know, they tried to issue move-on orders before, and all the kids started chanting very loudly. And if you can't hear the move-on order, it hasn't been effectively delivered. Brilliant. So that right royally pissed the police off.

And but they literally, they'd lined up like three deep, about eight across all of these riot squad police. And have you ever heard of Turkey get cranky and go, with its chest, like pumping up anger. Yes. They were all like these big puffed up turkeys. Only they had guns and batons and, you know, tasers. This is insane.

And on the other side, all these kids, right, school kids. And it was just, yeah, I was with this moment, right? And the sky is this sort of foul color, ashes falling for the time. They're asking for action on climate change. And anyhow, then they just move the riot squad in to just surround all the individual kids. And instead of doing a mass move-on order,

they issued them individually to the kids. and I was sort of standing there with the kids trying to sort of be between them and the riot squad. That's where you want to be, right? Yeah, between the kids and the riot squad, sure. And then I got wrapped around by a bunch of riot squad. And all the kids had said they were going to move on eventually. None of them wanted to get arrested.

And I was in the middle of saying, yeah, just like that little kid over there, I'll move on and bang, got arrested, got wrapped up, thrown in police wagon. And 12 months later, we had the charges thrown out in court, but not before they had, you know, served like, I don't know, 30 centimetre deeper paper on me and 30 different witness statements from the police trying to actually have me successfully prosecuted and they've got thrown out.

Because every time the chaser has got into trouble, one of the really fascinating things that always means that the police never win is that their police statements, did you find this? Their police statements were just totally untrue because the thing is there's always footage of anything we do and then they're used to just exaggerating and lying on their witness statements.

And so they always end up checking out. Is that what happened with you? Well, I mean, their statements had minimal connection with reality. That's true, which is a great New South Wales tradition. There's a name for it when the police come together and get all their common position on a thing. Oh, yeah, Tuesday. Yeah. It's called the scrum down.

They all put their head together and they all come together with the same statement and they all come out. But in this case, they were charging me with failing to comply with a move-on direction. and the police's own video had me been surrounded by Riot Squad. And they say, will you move on? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say, yeah. So I always kind of felt confident about defending that charge. But, you know, who knows what expense to the taxpayer.

They decided to press on with the prosecution. But I thought, yeah. I thought saying, yeah, in response to a move-on direction, was a pretty good defence for failing to comply with a move-on direction. None of the medical advice contained in the chase report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. Elections coming up, it'll probably be in May.

I can't believe we don't know yet. What is your message to, like, there'll be people who sort of want to, who are listening to this, wanting to do something. What's your message for, what, how people can most effectively influence the election in the next few months? Well, I mean, we're always a grassroots supported campaign. So the way the Greens managed to actually have a voice is, heaps of small donations. We don't take donations from any corporates in New South Wales.

Small donations is what actually gets us funded. If you're thinking about, you know, where a small donation can go. Also, you know, get online and sign up and help out with some door knocking or some phone banking and actually get those one-on-one communications. Because it's really, I mean, this podcast are great, right? But the way you persuade people is one-on-one conversations. And podcasts. You can't tell these men that podcasts don't help. They'll actually implode. but they it's a mixture you've got to have a voice you've got to be i personally believe you've got to be seen to be a proper politician you've got to be present in traditional media

you've got to be hitting things on like podcasts you've got to be seen to be an actual player but then you also you nail home change by one-on-one conversation so that's how it happens and if if you think that labor have kind of got zero actual willingness to change and a pretty non-message if you really want to actually change politics the best way of doing i would say is vote one green, then whack number two in Labor, if that's where you're going, because we need people in Parliament who actually force good outcomes on them. Labor's not going to deliver proper change on climate. It's not going to deliver the kind of anti-corruption body we want. It's not going to tax billionaires, it's not going to tax corporations unless they have to.

And the only way they do that is if they're in a minority government and they have to deal with a crossbench that's going to force those kind of outcomes on them. And, you know, personally, I would love to be in a parliament that for the first time ever pushes back taxes and billionaires and corporates and delivers Medicare for dental. Wouldn't that be amazing? Oh, you have my vote immediately. My teeth are fucked. And isn't it astounding that in a country as rich as Australia, one of the big kind of class statements that are made, you know, you can tell someone's background and class and economic situation by their teeth. I mean, how have we got to that? Well, how else you would? But you need

something to signal who's good and who's bad. Aren't you worried that people are going to exploit free dental care? Like somebody who doesn't need it, might just get root canal. Yeah. Taxpayer root canal. Yeah. Of all the kind of, of all the corruption issues, people voluntarily go into the dentist for root canal.

It hasn't been high on my... Stick it on the watch list. Federal ICAC now. Get rid of the root canal. I just reckon, you know, people volunteering for root canal, ain't the corruption risk in Australian politics. But, you know, they're the kind of arguments that go against you when you want to expend something and happen for free.

You know, imagine diverting those rivers of billions of dollars that go to private schools. Imagine putting them into the public schools that most need it and actually changing that around, properly funding TAFE, actually tearing up the federal agreements on logging that since John Howard's time have seen koala habitat being literally ripped apart across the country. Told you, he was pro koala.

Oh, shut up. We can actually do that. But, you know, Labor has proven they won't do it by themselves. Like, Labor brought in the Fair Work Act, which is crap, and under which gig workers get no protections. You know, Labor created the arrangements under which tapes across, tape systems across the country have been savaged by private competition. I don't believe they're a force for the kind of change we need, which is why I'm in the Greens. That's why I think we need to be in there forcing that kind of change

on a minority labour government and will we get everything we want? No. Will we get a whole bunch of what we want? I hope so. But if you don't try, if you don't fight, you lose. Well, I think I'm not going to do any of that. I think I'm just going to go and brunch with some of the... Oh, our massive donors.

So you're just making shit loads of money and we're getting paid scary because that's the idea? Yeah, we'll get a few contracts. for car parks, and it'll be fine. I'll give you some links to some of those consultants who'll sort out your employee relations. Oh, nice. I love it.

We really need HR in this building. Have you thought about getting to union? We got one. We do have one, actually. Okay, that's enough. That's enough. This is over. David Chubridge, thank you very much for coming in.

Our gear is from road microphones. We're part of the ACAS Creator Network. And we are proudly sponsored by Adani. I'm just kidding. we're not we could use the money though honestly i think charles is about one bad decision away from selling out completely yeah well i've only come here for the furniture that is really bloody good